The UN human rights process of the 1940s, which gave each sovereign state an equal vote, broke starkly with the elite moral authority Rappard distilled from the mandate system. The involvement of non-European states and representatives of the Soviet bloc in the drafting process seemed to the neoliberals to be a reflection of the crisis of civilisation, not a solution to it. During the drafting of the UDHR, delegates from China and Saudi Arabia, among others, sought to relativise 'Western civilisation' and remind the European powers that a declaration of human rights could not be based on a single cultural tradition. The presence of delegates who had once been excluded from 'civilised' law-making bodies changed the terms of the debate.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 97